1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to initiation of telephone calls.
2. Description of Related Art
Efforts have been made in integrating the Web with telephony applications. One such popular application is the placing of telephone calls from PC to a regular telephone. A user can place a call to a regular telephone from the Web using Dialpad (Dialpad Communications, Inc.) or Net2Phone (Net2Phone, Inc.). In these applications, a user must manually enter a telephone number each time he wishes to initiate a call, or pick a telephone number from a structured list stored by and only available from the dialing application. In view of the success of such products and services, one could conclude that the users were satisfied and there has been no motivation to seek other solutions.
Some companies, in conjunction with their sales and customer-support efforts, have added a “call me” or “call-back” function to their web sites. With these functions, a user who browses to the company's web site may then manually enter his own telephone number and other information into a web page. The company's computers then initiate the call back to the user. This configuration is considered a “single-leg” phone call, because the call is initiated from one phone number to another phone number.
In contrast to single-leg phone calls, it is known to create multi-leg phone calls. One common form of multi-leg phone call is the operator assisted conference call. Multi-leg phone calls are also initiated in international call-back, in which a customer makes an incomplete call to a switch, and the switch then calls the customer back and connects the customer to a second phone number. As demonstrated by these two examples, multi-leg phone calls have been used primarily for complex calling arrangements having three or more parties, or where it is desirable to arbitrage calling costs or other factors between two parties.